Speech at a Meeting ofThe Executive Committee of the Communist International. June 19, 1920

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Published:PravdaNo. 133, June 20, 1920 –IzvestiaNo. 134 June 22, 1920.

      Printed from thePravdatext.Source:Lenin
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      Moscow,Volume 42,

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ComradeLenin put the question this way: what, in effect,
does it mean to recognise the dictatorship of the proletariat. It means
every day, in propaganda, agitation,speeches and articles, to prepare the proletariat for the conquest of
power, for the suppression of the exploiters, the suppression of all the
proletariat’s opponents. Comrade Lenin, on the basis of various
documents and newspapers, showed what a gulf existed between the Third
International and the entire policy of the French

Party.[1]He revealed all the rottenness of the Turatian wing of the
Italian Party, which was preventing the party from adopting a correct
line.

[1]Thereference is to theFrench Socialist
Party.

Atthe outbreak of the imperialist world war the
Party’s reformist leadership adopted a social-chauvinist stand of
open support of the imperialist war and participation in the bourgeois
government. There was a Centrist trend in the Party headed by Joan Longuet,
which took a social-pacifist stand and pursued a policy of conciliation
with the social-chauvinists. There was also a Left, revolutionary wing in
the Party which took an internationalist stand and was represented chiefly
by its rank and file.

Afterthe October Socialist Revolution a sharp struggle
developed within the Party between the open reformists and Centrists on the
one hand, and the Left, revolutionary wing, on the other-the latter
strengthened by rank-and-file workers who joined the Party en masse. At the
Party’s congress in Tours in December 1920 the revolutionary wing
received a majority. The congress adopted a decision for the Party to join
the Communist International and founded the Communist Party of France. The
majority of reformists and Centrists broke away from the Party and formed a
separate party, retaining the old name of French Socialist Party.